Together with many fellow scholars, I must express dismay
at the news concerning the chair in Palaeography at Kings. Palaeography
is a basic prerequisite for any kind of work with primary sources. Without
the endless opportunities for discovery and renewal contained in such
sources, scholarship could only end up going round in circles, accumulating
glosses of glosses or gratuitous extrapolations, as it sometimes will.

It is roughly estimated that the libraries and archives
of the Western world hold between 500,000 and 1 million mediaeval manuscripts,
and millions of charters, rolls and registers. This legacy, of which
large parts remain uncharted, constitutes the majority of any form of
knowledge and culture that has come down to us not only from the Middle
Ages but also from classical Antiquity. Furthermore, it is the most
massive accumulation of pre-Renaissance material artefacts preserved
in their original or close-to-original condition, and still used as
they were designed to be.

Palaeography, with its offspring codicology, is the one
discipline that considers such artefacts for what they were and are,
and not only for what information they may offer in specialised fields
such as literary studies and philology, art history, the history of
science, religious studies, philosophy, and all branches of history
in the broadest possible sense. What palaeography has to say on those
artefacts is of primary importance for any of those disciplines, if
the texts and art they contain are to be correctly understood and plausibly
interpreted.

David Ganz, for one, has earned much gratitude thanks
to both his own work and the decisive help and advice he has offered
countless individuals in many parts of the academic world. Conversely,
one could mention any number of publications by authors past and present,
great and small, whose arguments are undermined by palaeographical misconceptions.
As for the essential pursuit of palaeography, the specific study of
writing as such, it has much to offer (and yet to discover) concerning
the historical development of this fundamental cultural technology of
ours, i.e. about how we read, write and think to this day.

Southern Europe possesses many active and prestigious
chairs in palaeography and related fields. North of the Alps, it appears
that being an endangered species is not sufficient to become a protected
species. You are aware, of course, that Kings already has the
only chair in the whole of the English-speaking part of the world. Even
a small number of professional palaeographers might be enough for the
ecosystem of ancient and medieval studies, to train manuscript librarians
and archivists (not to mention experts for the market), and scholars
prepared to use handwritten material for their research, together with
younger palaeographers who will continue disseminating the necessary
notions and skills. Supply is already shorter than demand, and cutting
away what is left at this juncture will strike all serious scholars
as the wrong decision.

I was stunned at the announcement that King's College London intends
to "disinvest" itself of its Chair of Palaeography, and
the current incumbent, Professor David Ganz. All I could imagine initially
was some sort of mistake, a typographical error by a secretary. Palaeography
at King's College London is a world-class position, and has had a
series of very distinguished holders of the chair: Francis Wormald,
Julian Brown, A. C. de la Mare, and now David Ganz. These are people
who have formed not only generations of students but the very thinking
of the discipline itself.

I first met Professor Ganz some sixteen years ago, when I was running
a grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities here at Columbia
to catalogue our medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. At the time
I only knew of Professor Ganz, of his stellar reputation in the field.
I asked him to assume the function of the one outside Consultant on
the grant, to judge and advance my own work, and to formally catalogue
our manuscripts in caroline minuscule. Since then, and now that I
know him as a person, Professor Ganz continues to both judge and advance
my work, and to give definitive appreciations of the manuscripts of
his specialization.

If you will go online, to the Digital Scriptorium website (http://www.digital-scriptorium.org),
and search on Professor Ganz's name, you will see that he has contributed
to our knowledge of manuscripts in from coast to coast. The precise
localization and dating of these primary sources are the sine qua
non step in integrating the knowledge from the source into the pool
of our received knowledge. It is only by precise tracking of the surviving
evidence that we can watch ideas bloom and grow across Europe and
through the ages. Palaeography is the foundation of every discipline
that traces its history to a pre-print era; without it, at best we
guess, at worst we build castles on sand. Historians of all disciplines
have asked Professor Ganz's help in this crucial area; we have all
looked to King's College for guidance. How is it possible that King's
College itself so undervalues what the rest of us admire so greatly
at King's College?

The simplistic answer from you is, I know, financial constraints.
But we've all faced financial constraints in the past several years,
and some institutions have dealt with the problem in more flexible
or imaginative ways. Block all new appointments? Freeze all salaries?
Institute furloughs? whereby the entire institution or building is
closed for X number of days, even consecutively, in order to pare
down salaries (of professional, janitorial, security staff), and also
to slash heating and electrical bills? I know of some places where
the combined staff met and agreed to salary reductions by X% in order
to arrive at the overall institutional rate of reduced income. Agree
to longer summer hours (when lighting and airconditioning is less
onerous) and to shorter winter hours? Offer inducements to the staff
as individuals for flex time in their appointments: aspiring novelists,
mothers of small children, theater devotees as well as academics writing
books all have reasons to find more time for personal pursuits a greater
reward than a high salary.

I don't imagine that either of you relished the task set to you:
reduce the overall budget by X amount. But I also don't imagine that
you understood the prestige and the power of the Palaeography position
and of Professor Ganz. Please try to find a different solution to
the financial crisis-the which will, after all, only last so long,
whereas the loss of the Palaeography position and of Professor Ganz
will harm King's College  and the rest of us  permanently.

Alarmed by the news of the planned suppression of the Chair of
Palaeography at King's College London, I take the liberty of adding
my voice to the numerous other voices seriously concerned about
this proposal.

The subject of Palaeography is medieval handwritten books. These

are the sole source for all we know about the intellectual production
of Antiquity and the Middle Ages: for religion (including the
Bible), philosophy, law, literature, music, science, history,
language (much of it still very imperfectly known). All
editions, printed or digital, are merely derivates from the handwritten
material, which remains the sole actual source for all texts dating
from a period of more than two thousand years;

are at the same time, by the mere fact of their existence, witnesses
to the meaning these texts have had for Western civilization;

contain a substantial part of what remains of the visual arts
of these centuries;

are, as physical objects, in their hundreds of thousands, a
non-negligible part of the archaeological heritage.

To make sense of these books - beginning with being able to read
them, and going on to understanding them archaeologically and culturally
- takes skills. And these skills need to be taught, and to be developed.
This cannot be exclusively left to assistants giving some elementary
instruction; there must be some scholars working and teaching creatively
in this field.

During the past decennia academic posts for palaeography have been
abolished all over Europe at an alarming rate [my own chair in Leiden
among them], to the point where most of Europe North of the Alps
is now virtually empty. Palaeographers are a highly endangered species.
The more posts are abolished, the heavier the responsibility for
the few remaining ones must weigh. The country (or county) which
happens to harbour the last tigers or the last whales finds itself
with a special responsibility, which it cannot shirk; so also with
the last palaeographers.

Otherwise we must envisage a future where all manuscripts will
have been digitized and made accessible on the Internet, but there
will be no one left to understand or even read them, and so they
will, for all practical purposes, have turned into dead matter.

I would strongly urge that all possible avenues be explored in
order to salvage one of the few remaining serious academic posts
in this field in Northern Europe.

Prof. Dr. J.P. GUMBERT

Emeritus
Professor of Western Palaeography and Codicology, Leiden University

We are writing this letter as Nordic members of the
Comité International de Paléographie Latine.

Abolishing the Chair of Palaeography at Kings
College would be a hard blow to the whole English-speaking scholarly
community, of which the Nordic countries are a part. Palaeography
may seem an exclusive and narrow field, but it is in fact an essential
part of the training of scholars in the humanities. Although only
a very small percentage of our students end up as professional palaeographers,
we teach generations of students in the humanities, from Classical
studies to Early Modern linguistics, to read and competently judge
their own source material, and to put it in its correct historical
context.

Professor David Ganz is a highly respected scholar
and teacher in our field, famous for his generosity in sharing his
knowledge with colleagues and students. To cut the funding of his
chair would seriously damage the discipline and the international
prestige of Kings College.

Kings College's strained financial situation, like the
measures envisaged for its amelioration, resemble conditions faced by
educational and scientific institutions throughout the world. I personally
understand well how painful your task is as you try to reduce expenses
at Kings College. However, I think it my duty to tell you about the
extraordinary experience of Russian scholars as we have struggled to
preserve such fields of study in the humanities and social sciences
as Greek and Latin, Roman law, Byzantine studies, Latin and Greek palaeography,
and the history of early Christianity. After flourishing until the early
1920s, the teaching of all these subjects was abolished, as was philological
education in secondary schools. The impact on our national culture was
enormous. It is easy to decree by impulsive fiat the destruction of
traditions that took centuries to establish. Then, in the 1930s, two
chairs of Classics were reestablished in Leningrad and Moscow, but there
was no teaching of classics in secondary schools. It was amidst the
disasters of the Second World War, that Byzantine, European medieval,
and early Christian studies were duly reestablished and the special
scientific reviews appeared anew. Immediately after the War, Latin studies
were reintroduced in numerous secondary schools. All this helped the
nation recreate itself and survive in extremely difficult conditions.

Some years later all this progress began to be reversed. The teaching
of the classics was again stopped in the secondary schools. The cultural
degradation of the new Russia is very well known throughout the world.

Some scholars have nevertheless struggled -- and managed -- to preserve
the best traditions of the humanities in Russia. All these scholars
are deeply grateful to the western colleagues who have supported them
in their struggles, helping in and encouraging their scientific and
cultural activities. Although we both are the same age, Professor David
Ganz became my adviser and teacher in the late 1970s and has helped
me create a respectable collection of books on Latin manuscripts and
palaeography. Without his constant support, I could never have become
a specialist in Latin manuscripts and medieval paleography. He also
supported my election in 1998 to the Comité international de
paléographie latine. During the last 12 years, as a member of
that association, I have seen how deeply Professor Ganz is admired by
his colleagues. He is one of the leading members of the international
community of scholars who are engaged in revealing and illuminating
the cultural treasures preserved in our libraries and archives.

I sincerely hope that you will struggle to maintain the humanistic
traditions so long preserved and cultivated in Great Britain, and resist
the pressures for change in the name either of "economy" or
"social equality" whose disastrous effects we in Russia have
experienced at first hand. Traditions are easy to abolish and painfully
difficult to reestablish.

The international scholarly community has learnt with
dismay that King's College is planning to abolish the only chair of
palaeography in the UK. As palaeography does not only consist of reading
old scripts but also placing them in their historical context, such
a decision would inevitably have a very negative impact on the development
of the research of a number of disciplines concerned with original written
sources, such as history, art history, ecclesiastical history, text
editing.

Considering the worldwide impact of centuries-long British
research in book history, the effects would not only be limited to Britain
but affect international research in general. The high international
standing of Professor David Ganz in this field makes the planned measure
seem quite in contrast to efforts at upholding and enhancing the prestige
of King's College as an academic institution.

The Finnish Society for Book history earnestly asks you
to reconsider this decision.

I write to protest the proposal to end financial support for
the Chair of Palaeography at Kings College.

Palaeography is fundamental to the entire range of classical
and mediaeval studies: not only textual criticism and the editing
of texts, but more broadly, for history (intellectual and cultural
history, economic history, history of science (e.g. mathematics,
medicine, and the rest), art history), musicology, theology,
and Greek literature and Latin literature and English and all
vernacular and modern literatures of Europe.

It is the glory of palaeography as taught and practiced in
the British Isles in modern times, for more than a century,
that it is closely tied to cultural history. And David Ganz,
palaeographer and historian, is internationally famous as a
representative of just that sort of training and teaching. In
addition, David is probably the most important single figure
in the worldwide network of scholars who aid each other and
share their expertise in a generous and mutually beneficial
way.

Kings College may not be aware of it, but the occupant of your
Chair of Palaeography has spread the fame of Kings College throughout
the Republic of Letters; if you doubt my assessment, just look
at the countless publications in which David and therefore Kings
College are cited in acknowledgement of scholarly aid. The chair
in question, and the man who holds it, are at the center of
this network that I have been trying to describe, as his predecessors
Julian Brown and Tilly de la Mare (both of whom I knew) were
earlier. It would be an intolerable blow to the renown of Kings
College and its longstanding humane tradition if this essential
part of its scholarly program were to be lost.

Please receive my entreaty to spare the chair in paleography
at King's College.

The Beda-Venerabilis-Codex 451 in the Library of St. Gall, written
in Anglo-Saxon minuscule (see my recent Catalogue, 2009, p. 8 s.,
pl. 5), illustrates a wide network of palaeographical links across
Europe, and the influence of Insular writing on the continent
as far as St. Gall during the early middle ages, which is also
the field of David Ganz' own teaching and research.

The international network of scholars is just as vital today,
and the loss of the chair at King's would create a terrible gap
in it. Moreover, if the teaching of palaeography should disappear,
the access of future research to our whole heritage of pre-modern
written documents would become seriously limited (see my warning
in an article in the Gazette du Livre médiéval
48, 2006).

Considering the enormous worldwide cost of all technical disciplines,
the money saved by abolishing a single chair in palaeography will
never be equal to the loss of such an essential tradition.

I would be grateful if you should give heed to this and other
letters, and reconsider your decision.

Would you like to see Westminster Abbey becoming reduced to rubble?
Of course not  I am sure.

Manuscripts are monuments, too, handing down history; manuscripts
are mobile monuments, they are delicate and highly varied treasures
of memory, craftsmanship and creative mental activity. Manuscripts,
therefore, need well trained hands, eyes and brains; they deserve
professional understanding. To acquire such capacity, one must
have teachers.

Britain had famous, globally respected teachers in palaeography
who played an important part in international research; I only
remind of Julian Brown and Albinia de la Mare: not to continue
what they have advanced means to step on their life's work and
to cut off the international col-laboration which is absolutely
necessary for palaeographical and historical research.

Dear Sir, please, think it over again. Surely you don't want
Britain to become an illiterate considering her earliest books.

I am sure that by now the letters from so many distinguished
colleagues from around the world will have impressed upon you
the esteem in which the King's College Chair is held, and the
depth of concern at its proposed disestablishment.

I can only echo the sentiments already expressed: that the discipline
of palaeography is fundamental to the scholarly pursuit of medieval
studies (history, art and literature) in general; that the King's
College Chair and its incumbents have played, and continue to
play, a vital role in the promotion of the discipline; and that
such a tradition, once destroyed, will be very difficult to recreate
in the future.

Unique to my own contribution is only the simple fact that I
live and work at the greatest possible distance from London. Despite
this, I was well acquainted with the previous two holders of the
Chair, and count the present one as a personal friend. In the
past I have been invited by these persons to give lectures and
seminars in the College.

The 'impact' of your Chair of Palaeography is thus literally
world-wide, with a reach from Iceland and Russia to Australia
and New Zealand. I am sure that many other colleagues in the antipodes
would wish to join me in urging you to reconsider its disestablishment.

Yours sincerely,

Rodney THOMSON

Honorary
Research Fellow
School of History & Classics
University of Tasmania
Hobart, Australia

I am writing to urge you and your colleagues to reconsider the
proposal to disinvest in the discipline of palaeography by terminating
the King's Chair in Palaeography. Expertise and continued research
in palaeography is fundamental to the understanding of the history
of written communication and culture in the Middle Ages, and of
the significance of that period for the post-medieval history of
writing and for the preservation and transmission of the literature
of the ancient world. An, in effect, single-person department might
at first glance appear less sustainable than a large one, but that
would be to ignore the close and indispensable relationship between
palaeography and numerous other larger departments in the humanities.

The founders of the various European national historical institutes
in the mid-nineteenth century recognised the fundamental role played
by palaeography, not only for the practical skills it provided (to
read unfamiliar letterforms and other graphic conventions) but also
for the analytical and interpretative expertise required to place
books and documents within their correct historical context. These
requirements remain, since a great proportion of the written artifacts
of the past have still to be properly analysed and evaluated. However,
more recent developments in scholarship have served to make palaeography
still more important. It is increasingly being appreciated that
the meaning of written texts for their audience is shaped in part
by the material and visual form in which they are transmitted and
disseminated; changes in form and appearance accompany changes in
the meaning and significance of the texts. The holders of the Chair
in Palaeography at King's have all understood the discipline of
palaeography as extending beyond the study of purely graphic conventions
to include all aspects of the written artifact, and thus to include
what is sometimes labelled separately as codicology. Scholars now
studying 'the material text' in the early modern and modern periods
have much to learn from the methods and approaches of medieval palaeographers
such as these.

As the only established chair in palaeography in the English-speaking
world, and in view of its proximity to the nation's largest collections
of medieval manuscript books and documents (at the British Library
and the National Archives), the Chair at King's is of national and
international significance. This was recognised by HEFCE a little
over a decade ago when it decided to award to King's a major grant
towards the endowment of such a post.

The significance of the Chair in Palaeography extends beyond the
world of scholarship. Custodians of the major collections of cultural
artifacts are rightly being encouraged to widen access to their
collections through digitisation projects. For the public interest
to be properly served, digital images of the unfamiliar need to
be rendered meaningful through description and interpretation. This
must be done under the guidance of experts, otherwise the public
will be fed misleading or flawed information. Professor Ganz, the
current holder of the Chair, has already played a major role in
one such project as the principal investigator of the British Library's
digital catalogue of illuminated manuscripts.

I appreciate that these are desperately difficult times, when hard
decisions must be taken, but I would urge you to view the Chair
in Palaeography as a special case, whose termination would have
damaging consequences not only for scholarly excellence at King's
but also for scholarship in the humanities both nationally and internationally,
and for the public awareness and understanding of its written heritage.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Teresa WEBBER

University
Senior Lecturer in Palaeography and Codicology
Member of the Comité International de Paléographie
Latine

It was with shock and disbelief that I learned your intention to
preside over the disinvestment in Latin Palaeography at
Kings College and, in effect, the sacking, of the present, highly
distinguished incumbent of the Chair of Palaeography, Professor David
Ganz.

This scheme is, to my mind, a deeply flawed investment decision,
and there is no question of its having any possible intellectual merit.
My own classes, including formal and informal offerings of Latin Palaeography
(my Classics colleagues also like to use me for other things), at
the University of Chicago burgeon with Asian students avid to learn
the groundwork and instruments of Western technical culture, wherein
the Written Word and Books have reigned supreme and do, in fact, underlie
all the other mechanical innovations in the ascendant today. Meanwhile,
the prime individual focus of palaeographical learning and activity
in the West stands under threat of elimination. This is no rational
economy. The Chair and Professor Ganzs activities attract numerous
students, both formally and informally to London and Britain, in the
Summer Palaeographical Workshops and otherwise to consult, absorb,
and appropriate in new, unsuspected ways the Culture that we purport
to foster or at least to safeguard in our universities. I have no
doubt that the active tuition given, in various guises, by Professor
Ganz attracts far more paying students and colleagues to Britain in
a year than his costs amount to in several. Even if the
synergies of Professor Ganzs intellectual capital,
as our Chicago economists would rightly term it, havent been
assayed in detail, they are certainly real.

Professor Ganz is personally active in myriad ways at the heart of
a considerable worldwide network of scholars. His influence cannot
simply be measured in head-counts or word-counts. It reflects a deep
and long commitment to study, that makes it possible for Professor
Ganz to envisage plausible connections across a vast range of materials,
isolated in origin and now place of conservation, but all in a living
cultural connection. Professor Ganz regularly provides needed answers
and stimulating questions in reply to medievalist-Classicist scholars
like myself and also to scholars working in histories and literatures
of the most varied sorts, both Western and non-Western. His particular
play of mind and deep personal learning allow for essential connections
made inconspicuously, but thanks to him, in the work of many others,
from scholars of Law to practitioners, in my classroom experience,
of Classical Chinese calligraphy.

David Ganz is in no sense a fungible commodity, and it is inconceivable
to me that London would willingly lose a man of his singular capacity
and world-wide intellectual importance. I know that others have written
of the importance of training in Palaeography. That is
the most obvious and real need that the looming choice discounts and
disregards. It is plain to me, and to anyone who reflects for a moment,
that the living tuition rooted in familiarity, intimacy, and experience
that Professor Ganz brings to his students are immeasurably important.
Where the loss of that would eventually end for history and literature,
if the scheme goes forward, seems a horrible and ominous cultural
prospect.

I can only hope that good sense and circumspect reason will prevail.
People on the market place often dont see beyond their wicket.
This is a matter of national and international reach and significance,
and I cannot see how an act of wanton capital destruction will rate
as a rational choice.

Through the press and the internet we heard that
Kings College, due to budget strains, is forced to close down
its world-famous chair of paleography.

As director of a library and as head of the manuscript
department we fully understand the need to keep to a budget and
to plan the best future for one's institution, including sometimes
difficult adjustments. But as diligent managers we have also learned
to adapt our plans to the best interests of the community we serve.

As you know, the publications of your researchers
are famous and highly appreciated. Maybe you are less aware that
they are also widely used and very useful to many people active
in historical and cultural fields, and not just to a few highly
specialised researchers in the ivory tower. Our library owns the
books by David Ganz. We appreciate them and use them for our studies.

Universities, historical research centers, libraries
and museums contribute to shaping the public awareness of our
roots and of our understanding of today's world, including the
origins of some today's religious problems or cultural phenomena.
The unwritten deal between universities, libraries and museums
runs like this: libraries protect their books and documents and
make them available (for instance on-line and via paper catalogues);
Universities offer scholars the setting for studying them and,
through publications enrich everyone's knowledge about the Middle
Ages; museums make this knowledge available to a large public.
If you cease to train students in reading and interpreting old
texts and archival documents, these skills will be lost and thus,
a successful story will come to an end, as libraries and museums
do not have the function or even the means to replace universities
in these aspects.

As recent exhibitions in Switzerland and Germany
show, the Middle Ages are a popular cultural theme; and this is
certainly no different in England. The exhibition on Charles the
Bold in Bern in 2008, where many medieval manuscripts, documents
and artifacts were presented, is a good example of it. The event
was supported by King Albert II and the Queen Paola of Belgium,
the president of Austria and the president of Switzerland, and
attracted more than 100,000 visitors. But this success is due
to the enormous scholarly work that went into the event. More
than 40 professors and scholars contributed texts to the exhibition
catalogue and wrote explanatory notes for the exhibits, not to
mention the international colloquium which lasted several days
and resulted in the publication of an entire volume of new research.
This is only possible if the universities do their job!

As you see, what happens in your classrooms can
have a clear impact on society. We urge you not to break the chain.
Compared to a chair in medicine or in science, a chair of paleography
does not offer a potential for large savings. However, by closing
down the last established chair of paleography in the United Kingdom,
you would deprive your country from being able to study its past.
The conclusion seems clear: the loss of these invaluable skills
and the damage to historical Studies in UK are not worth the savings!
People around the world would not understand that such a well
renowned institution like Kings College would take such a step.

If you happen to come to Bern, we would be happy
to introduce you to some of our major manuscripts and to discuss
these topics further.

I write concerning the grim news that King's College,
where I once studied as a graduate student, has plans to eliminate
the Chair in Paleography held by my former teachers, Julian Brown
and Albinia de la Mare, and now by my esteemed colleague, David
Ganz. In light of the fact that this Chair is the last of its kind
in Great Britain, not to mention the distinguished history of paleography
at King's, this decision represents nothing short of a disaster.
It is not, however, too late to reverse it.

For medievalists and early modernists who work on the vast and
still largely unpublished and uncharted store of documentation from
over one and a half millennia of our common history, paleography
has been and remains an essential tool for accessing knowledge about
the past. Unless students continue to have a way to study this essential
subject, the very foundations of pre-modern and early European history
will cease to stand. Over the years, the paleography courses at
King's have proved to be an essential resource, not only for students
all over Britain, but also from the United States and beyond. I
cite my own experience as a graduate student as only one example.

Paleography is not simply an arcane auxiliary science, despite
its reputation as a "Hilfswissenschaft." It is as basic
to the training and practice of historians as mastery of DOS or
UNIX might be to a computer scientist. In light of the interest
in new media and the history of media, there is at present a surge
of interest in the history of writing that has produced exciting,
seminal scholarship across a wide range of disciplines, not only
history, but also art history, classics and, not least, the new
and fascinating field that focuses on the history of reading. Needless
to say, one cannot seriously study the history of reading, with
all it entails, unless one can read older forms of documentation,
which is precisely where paleography comes in. Moreover, without
the perspective on the past provided by the study of old media,
the study of new media becomes far, far less meaningful.

To eliminate the study of paleography in Great Britain, which is,
in effect, what your decision will cause to come about, would --
pardon my bluntness -- represent an unforgivable act of cultural
iconoclasm, nihilism, philistinism and shortsightedness. Indeed,
your assault on the Humanities in general seems part of a program
to reduce King's to a pauper or, perhaps, something closer to a
vocational school. That said, should you reverse your decision or
at least make a concerted effort to find any way possible to forestall
it, you will earn the lasting gratitude of a large group of students
and scholars worldwide.

The news that the Board of Kings College London
considers to discontinue the Chair in Latin Palaeography came
as a great shock to me, and I have no doubt that this opinion
is shared by all scholars engaged in any aspect of Classical or
Mediaeval studies worldwide.

It would be a great shame to abolish the only Chair
in this field in the British Isles. Although I realize that the
Chair in palaeography in Leiden, the Netherlands, was discontinued
a decade ago, I must nevertheless stress that the vacant second
Chair in the Netherlands, at Groningen University, will be advertised
shortly. It strikes me as somewhat odd that no Chair in palaeography
would be left in the entire UK, when a small country such as the
Netherlands realizes the relevance of this subject, and decides
to refill the vacant position.

I very much hope that you will reconsider your original
decision, and that David Ganz, one of the worlds foremost
palaeographers, will be allowed to continue in holding this Chair,
which is so vital for the proper understanding and editing of
Classical and Mediaeval texts.

I write as chair of the British Library Project Board for the on-line
Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts. Prof. Ganz has been a member
of this Board for six years (I calculate), during which time the Project
has gained major funding from the Getty Trust and AHRC. David has
given of his time and unrivalled expertise most generously in substantial
editorial work to assure the scholarly standing of the Catalogue.

David may be a somewhat unworldly person, but his reputation internationally
would make any faculty grateful to have him on board. His subject,
palaeography, contrary to appearances, is distinctly worldly: it provides
the indispensable scholarly foundation on which most of our knowledge
of the pre-modern world is based. Palaeography has long been a jewel
in the crown of history teaching and research in London, a jewel which
our non-London-based and international colleagues regard with admiration.

In my judgement a decision to terminate Professor Ganzs contract,
and to abandon the chair of palaeography, will not only damage humanities
teaching and research internationally as well as nationally, but will
specifically gravely damage the academic standing of Kings College.

I would ask you, therefore, to reconsider the action which I understand
you have proposed.

I am writing to protest the cutting of funding for the Chair in
Palaeography. This action is eerily reminiscent of a common occurrence
in a paleographer's life: seeing materials that have been discarded
because their owners could not read them or understand their worth.

The nature of the materials of our field, the variable characteristics
of hand-written books, means that paleography is not a mechanical
field: scholars of different backgrounds and training will approach
the materials differently. It is the combined efforts, over time,
of scholars from varying intellectual traditions that yield understanding
as complete as it can be. This is why the loss of even one center
for training paleographers is a disaster for the field: there isn't
one standardized approach that consistently applies always and everywhere.

By eliminating this position, you are saying, "Our understanding
of the past is complete. We know everything about the materials we
have discovered, and no new materials will be discovered. Existing
interpretations are correct and sufficient, and will never need reconsideration.
Great Britain's role in interpreting the past has ended."

This short-sighted action at King's College will have a world-wide
impact on the field far into the future.